Alexius of Novgorod

Saint Alexius was archbishop of Novgorod, ordained bishop in 1360 and died on 3 February 1390 (or 1389). Before his episcopate he had been keeper of the keys of the archiepiscopal house at Saint Sophia. He is venerated as a saint with local veneration, commemorated on 3 February; our sources do not mention a general canonization.

His ministry

Soon after his ordination, in 1360, plague struck Pskov and every day 50 to 100 people died. The people of Pskov sent to Novgorod to summon His Grace Alexius. He came, blessed all the townspeople, went around the city with crosses, served three Liturgies, and the plague began to abate.

In 1362 he built the church of the Nativity of Christ in the archiepiscopal court. In the 1360s and 1370s, by his order, a new set of Menaia for the whole year was made to replace the oldest sets of the cathedral of Saint Sophia. An example is the October Menaion on parchment of 1370, kept in the National Library of Russia. These Menaia of Alexius were used at Saint Sophia for about 70 years, until the middle of the fifteenth century, when Archbishop Euthymius ordered a new set with a different redaction of the service texts. His episcopate was a time of building: he was personally involved in famous works of Novgorod, among them the church of the Transfiguration on Ilyin Street and the complex of paintings in the church of the Dormition on the Volotovo Field.

The icon of the Mother of God

In 1365 he witnessed a wonderful appearance from the icon of the Mother of God of Tenderness. During a thunderstorm the wooden church of the Holy Trinity on Redyatin Street caught fire, and the icon inside appeared standing above the burning church. Only when Alexius arrived with a procession and served a service of supplication did the icon descend into the hands of the bishop, and the fire ceased. In memory of the event Alexius blessed the setting into the wall at the entrance of the cathedral of Saint Sophia of a cross with bas-⁠reliefs, called the Cross of Alexius.

Relations with Moscow and his end

The unsettled relations between the archbishopric of Novgorod and the metropolia of Moscow led him in the winter of 1375 to retire demonstratively to the Resurrection Monastery at Derevyanitsa. At the insistent request of the people he returned to govern the diocese on 9 March 1376 and in the same year headed an embassy to Moscow. Only in 1380 did negotiations with Grand Prince Dmitry Ivanovich bring peaceful relations between the Muscovites and the Novgorodians.

He was archbishop for 28 years and 7 months. On 22 April 1388 he again left the see and withdrew to Derevyanitsa, where he died on 3 February 1390 (or 1389) and was buried in the porch of the church of the Resurrection. When the new cathedral was built in the seventeenth century, his relics were moved to the west porch.

The scholar Gerold Vzdornov supposed that Alexius is depicted on the south wall of the church of the Dormition on the Volotovo Field, in a donors' fresco of the 1380s: he and Saint Moses, archbishop of Novgorod, the builder of the church, stand with haloes before the Mother of God, in white cowls and cross-⁠patterned phelonia. The image, painted in his lifetime or soon after his death, would preserve his true features. A painters' manual of the eighteenth century calls him the blessed Alexius, without giving a day of commemoration.